This invention relates to engine starters and more particularly to engine starters for re-starting internal combustion engines.
Internal combustion engines, particularly those used in automobiles, are started by an engine starter motor which is a combination of an electric motor driven by a battery and a pinion gear that is electromagnetically moved into engagement with a ring gear on the flywheel of the engine and is rotated by the motor when an ignition switch is turned on. Once the engine has been started, the starter switch is turned off to stop the motor and the pinion gear becomes disengaged from the ring gear.
Recently conceived energy-saving schemes involve the complete shut off of the internal combustion engine when the engine is in the idle state, such as when the car is waiting for a traffic signal to turn green, thereby saving the gasoline that has heretofore been wasted during idling of the engine.
If an internal combustion engine with an ordinary starter motor is shut off for each traffic signal, the starter motor, which consumes significant electric energy from the battery, must be quite frequently energized to restart the engine, leading to a quick "death" of the battery.